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Weingarten takes on critics of due process

AFT President Randi Weingarten appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" television show on Aug. 5 to make the case for teachers' due process rights, to correct widely held misconceptions about the teaching workforce, and to clarify that problems tied to evaluation are often mislabeled as due process issues.

"What due process does," Weingarten explained, "is let people innovate in classrooms. It lets people whistle-blow. It lets people talk about the things that kids and teachers need." The system that needs changing, Weingarten added, is not due process but teacher evaluation. "In jurisdiction after jurisdiction, we've actually worked to fix things."

The AFT president also took on the popular myth that teaching is dominated by an aging, underperforming workforce that has leveraged due process protections into guaranteed lifetime employment. "Our teaching force is hugely changed, and you don't have a whole lot of people who are senior teachers anymore," she pointed out.